Jews in Palestine and Arabs in Israel

Great Debates
21

Yes, I guess that is my point. I agree that Palestinian nationalism is an oppositional nationalism of recent origins. Indeed pre-1967 it mostly expressed itself in pan-Arabism, the flavor of the time. It is only that in the last few decades that the “Palestinianism”, to coin an awkward word, has emerged.

But it is no less real for all of that. One might draw a parallel with the Macedonians, whose national identity, at best, reaches back to the 19th century, and more solidly to the early 20th. And it too, arose within an oppositional framework ( anti-Ottoman, anti-Serbian, anti-Bulgarian hegemony - though that last is a bit more complicated as the ties between Macedonia and Bulgaria are significant ).

So it always seemed sort of a petty argument ( or counter-argument if you prefer ), to make. It’s splitting hairs about and causes a tired re-circling of those old unresolvable ( and unhelpful ) arguments over who deserves the land more.

Also if I might digress for a minute it is indeed likely that the “Palestinians” in some sense have been living in that region for thousands of years. Though the Bedouin east of the Transjordan are more recent migrants, the settled modern Arabs of today ( outside of Arabia and perhaps Syria, which was more Arab than not by the time of the Muslim conquests ) are probably proportionally more descendants of “Arabized” and Islamicized" pre-Islamic populations, than they are of actual post-conquest Arab immigrants. This is especially true in certain regions, like Egypt, that had a dense pre-Islamic population and saw comparatively little Arab settlement. The analogy can probably be made to the “Latinization” of such areas as Gaul and Iberia in the Roman empire.

No that I think any of the above has any particular relevance to the dispute at hand. Like I said, “who was here first” arguments aren’t terribly meaningful in my book.

  • Tamerlane
22

I agree, and it is really nice to see such a calm, rational discussion of these issues. They are usually held quite close and argued with a lot of vitriol.

The argument against Israeli or Palestinian nationhood is totally unpragmatic. Any peace solutions need to work with the situation on the ground. Arguments which ignore that (“The Jews should go back to Europe” or "The Palestinians don’t really exist) are totally bunk in my book. Many of the most prosperous and powerful nations in the world date their “peoplehood” back one or two hundred years at most. The Palestinians and the Israelis, with their 50 odd years of “peoplehood” really shouldn’t be in the business of denying the other’s existence anymore.

23

I agree. A better analogy is perhaps Aboriginal people in Australia, they obviously didn’t have an “Aboriginal parliament” per se, but they did inhabit the land, they had defined tribal areas, they had a reasonably common culture, though of course bigger variations the further apart the tribes were.

Because they weren’t politically “advanced” in the sense of a unified goverment, or concept of “Aboriginalia and the Aboriginal people” doesn’t mean they weren’t the rightful - or valid - inhabitants of the land.

And ditto tamerlane - “who was first” really isn’t meaningful here.

24

So why don’t the four of us get together, and solve the mess? :slight_smile:

Seriously though, if you return to this thread’s main point, there’s a vital question being asked. Any solution to the present mess will depend on drawing borders, and central to that will be what is the likely fate of groups who by reason of those borders find themselves on the “wrong” side of the line. We’ve seen in India/Pakistan one model, and it’s too horrible to contemplate going through it again here.

In another thread, I have floated the idea of a federation of small states in place of the current thinking of two-state solution. IMO, one of the advantages of this is that conflict resolution is brought down to more manageable dimensions. If a problem exists in a specific location, the people directly involved are the only ones who should have a say in resolving it. To take an extreme example, if Eilat were designated as an Arab city surrounded by Israeli Negev, why should the people of Haifa have a say in how to work out border adjustments.

The thread OP points out that we have 50 years of experience of how Arabs will be treated in Israel - not perfect, certainly needing improvement, but at the very least tolerable. While there is no experience in treatment of Jews in “Palestine”, it is hard to imagine a comparable scenario, and this has to influence thinking in any proposed solution to the whole problem.

25

From what I’ve read it seems to me like Palestine was largely unoccupied during the 19th century, and that the prosperity and jobs the jewish immigrants brought lead to a wave of immigration of arabs from the surrounding areas.

26

One of the colonialist’s greatest and most characteristic myths is that the occupied real estate was empty and barren before the civilized colonialist arrived.

In fact, despite the steady arrival in Palestine of jewish colonialists after 1882, it was not until a few weeks immediately preceding the establishment of Israel in 1948 was there ever anything but a huge arab majority.

The jewish population in 1931 was 174,606 against a total of 1,033,314; in 1936, 384,078 out of 1,366,692; in 1946, there were 608,225 jews in a total population of 1,912,112. (The Anglo-Palestine Yearbook 1947-8 [London, 1948], p. 33)

According to Israeli sources, in 1822, there were no more than 24,000 Jews in Palestine, less than 10% of the whole.

While the colonialist myth is publicly summed up in the slogan “a land without people for a people without land,” the reality is revealed in Herzl’s private diary (ed. Raphaell Patai, Herzl Press, 1960, vol. I, p. 88) from 1895:

“We shall have to spirit the penniless population across the border by procuring employment for it in the transit countries, while denying it any employment in our own country. Both the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly.”

Today, this process is discreetly and circumspectly known as “transfer.”

27

Eh, well lout partially beat me to it, but I think the Ottoman census of 1878 ( of questioned reliability ) showed a population in parts of what is today Israel and the occupied territories of ~460,000. But there does seem to have a been a substantial growth in both Arab and Jewish populations in the interwar years.

However my understanding is that the region east of the Jordan River ( i.e. the area that was to become Transjordan ) was fairly lightly populated in this period. This is the region that came to be dominated by the Bedouin that migrated in with The Hashemites in the post-WW I period.

  • Tamerlane
28

The BS that revisionists come up with!!!
I notice you only cite “from what you read” giving us no clue of how you arrived at this conclusion.

This is however not the first time I have heard someone make this claim, the cite given last time was that Mark Twain travelling in Palestine (or South Syria as it was then) in the 19th century called the area “desolate and unoccupied”, however even this one quote is a misquote as he called it “desolate and unloved” and was referring to the lack of care that the Ottoman rulers gave to the area NOT to the native population of the area.

What makes this claim even more ridiculous is that census data is avaiadable for this period:

(there are several things that should be noted about the accuaracy of these figures 10 Ottoman censuses do not have the same level of accuracy as today’s censuses, the Acre district also included parts of Lebanon)
In 1922 the First British census took place, this was alot more accurate than the previous Ottoman ones:

Muslims 589,177, Jews 83,790, Christians 71,464, others 7,617

http://www.unu.edu/unupress/unupbooks/80859e/80859E05.htm

The claim that there was any huge Arab immigration as the result of zionist improvement of infrastructure is unsupported and is generally just fanciful thinking. The economic change brought abiut by the zionists doesn’t start to affect Palestine on a large scale basis until after the arrival of the British, who drastically improved the economic situation of the area too.

It is a misconception to think that early Jewish settlers were particularly rich and brought about huge changes in infrastructure wherever they went, for example within the walled city of Jerusalem, which became majority Jewish from sometime in the 19th century, there were no arrangments for sanitation and water was collected from rain water cisterns when the British army arrived in the December of 1917.

29

By your own reckoning, then, the total population (a cite of your source would help) of what was probably Greater Palestine was therefore about a quarter of a million people, in an area of 118,000 square kilometers, in other words barely two persons per square km. Is the phrase “a land without people for a people without land” so inappropriate, given a certain amount of latitude owing to the fact that Herzl was a journalist and writer? Or must he be hung, drawn and quartered, and his words taken as clear proof of the evil intent of the Zionists forever!

BTW, much material supporting the argument that the phenomenal growth in Arab population that occurred during the Mandate period was as a direct result of the benefits of Zionism can be found here

30

Rampisad, in link you provided (incidently the same one I used) The net immigration of non-Jews between 1930 and 1939 is 13,588, or roughly 1% of the non-Jewish population of 1939, whereas the increase in the Jewish population is 229,719 which is rougly 50% of the Jewish population of 1939.

I don’t know how you think that 1% of the population as immigrants is particularly large number.

31

Also Rampisad, at a guess the total population of Palestine in 1822 was probably a little larger than 250,000, as taking the population of 1878 of roughly 450,000 I would say 300,000-350,000 for 1822, due two reasons 1. Palestine was an extremely poor and rural province and you would expect a high birth rate to be balance out by a death rate. 2. During this period there was a significantly large net migration out of the area due the poor QoL

Also 300,000-350,000 is not a small population for an area of that size in 1822, those 350,000 have grown into roughly 6/7 million people (Arab population of Israel + Palestinian refugees outside of OT + population of the West Bank and Gaza.

32

I think this is another argument that is unpragmatic. The base conditions of the founding of Israel can be debated till the cows come home. We can debate population shifts, we can debate Stern Gang and Irgun versus the Fedayyin. But it isn’t going to change anything today. Today we have a situation of roughly equal Jewish and Palestinian populations, and any solution needs to deal with that fact, not the British Census of 1939 or the Ottoman Census of 1878. Yes they are interesting historically, but they have no relevance to the debate today. It is this kind of historical finger-pointing that often muddles the clear problem of two peoples living on nearly the same land.

33

Yes Edwino, undoing history is not the way forward, but neither is denying it. Recognising that there was a sizeable Arab majority prior to 1948 is key as it is also recognizing that the Palestinians have legitimate grievances against Israel and it’s foundation.

Also on another note it is just factually inaccurate to pretend that Palestine was unihabited prior to the zionists.

On another factual note, people shouldn’t confuse the (secular) zionists who began arriving in about 1880 and the earlier (religiously-motivated) Jewish mystics who began arriving in about 1830. Zionism didn’t really become organized until 1901 with the establishment of the Jewish National Fund.

34

Also - how “empty” or sparsely populated a land is should have no bearing on its inhabitants’ right to sovereignty. Just because a population is smaller, or weaker, doesn’t give it any less right to exist.

35

Rampisad:

An idea I’ve floated is for there to be two new states created, a Palwstinian state proper, coprising the eastern 2/3 of the West Bank, and a buffer strip between that and Israel–including East Jerusalem–that would be a sort of “International Holy Land”. The borders could be drawn so there would be roughly equal numbers of Jews and Muslims (with Christians playing a pivotal role). Jewish settlements further east would have to be removed, but here members of both faiths can considere themselves as having fulfilled their religious aspirations of living in the Holy Land. Both sides want Jerusalem as their capital, and there you are! Security would be provided not by Israeli troops but UN forces or other impartial authorities (The Church Police!).

A pessemistic view would have the IHL be the site of endless conflict, but an optimistic view would have it be an interesting laboratory for religious co-existence–with the whole World watching.

36

These are good points, but the problem is that bringing up these points often leads to the aforementioned “We were here first” arguments.

I took the OP and much of the discussion here to be assuming that at some point an agreement between the Israelis and Palestinians is reached, and then speculating as to how such an agreement could be implemented peacefully. As such, I don’t think the legitimacy of the Palestinians’ grievances was being questioned.

37

Yes Banger, but people often use the surrounding Arab countries refusal to recognize Israel and the clause in the PLO’s charter about the destruction of Israel to prove that the Arabs as people and a culture are antisemtic, rather than recognising that they are not racially motivated, but that they come from a real sense of injustice at the dispossesion that was brought about by the zionist colonists and the foundation of Israel.

38

All most Israelis are looking for is a settlement that will bring peace, recognize Israel’s right of existence, and will not compromise Israeli security. Nobody denies that wrongs were committed by the Israelis and Zionists before them during the foundation of Israel. It is the obsession with these ideas that perhaps leads to the problem that no settlement can be reached. This is particularly demonstratable with the refugee problem. Sure there were refugees created in the war. It is totally unrealistic to expect the Israelis to repatriate 100% of them within Israel as well as compensating Palestine and the Arab states for housing them since 1948 or 1967. Which was exactly the Palestinian line after Camp David II and the Taba negotiations.

The Palestinians need to also realize that the Israel has complaints. They need to realize that compromise involves both parties. They need to realize that the idea that every wrong must be compensated, even to the point that it will destroy Israel, is not an ideal worth pursuing. As mentioned earlier in the thread, hundreds of thousands of Jewish refugees were absorbed into Israel after expulsion from Arab countries. Why is it not too much to ask that beyond a partial settlement on the refugee problems (i.e. 10,000 repatriated with compensation for the rest), Palestine should absorb the rest of the refugees?

39

MC, do you really really want to get into yet another debate about how much Arab antisemitism there was before modern Israel ever existed? If you really want to accuse Israel’s supporrters of denying history then you really had better be prepared to not deny an awful lot yourself.

“Arab culture” was not antisemitic, but it did systematically oppress non-Moslems to varying degrees throughout its history, and much of the century before Israel’s birth was marked by dramatic and vitrolic antisemitism by Arab leadership. And not only against Jewish immigrants, but against longtime indigenous Jews as well. And don’t forget that the Mufti of Jerusalem ended up working for the Nazis rounding up Jews in Europe.

The history of this conflict is most notable for Arab leadership’s failure to accept compromise, failure time after time to accept less than everything that felt was justly due to them. Each time they have ended up having less than before, and blaming the Jews for it more and more.

Edwino says it well. It is time to compromise. Stop obsessing over percieved past wrongs … both sides can come up with a long list of those … and look to developing a future.

Here are the Palestinians’ choices:

  • Hold out for all of the occupied teritories and all of East Jerusalem including the Temple mount. They’ll never get it and more generations will grow up in conditions of increasing desperation encouraging their young adults to kill themselves murdering Jews. Either a continued state of martial law will persist or Israel will unilaterally disengage behind The Big Fence with a piss poor economic future for any Palestinian entity on the other side.

or

-Actually compromise. Give up on getting it all. Trade off on some land that contains border settlements and total control over the Temple Mount for better terms in future shared tax revenues and more guarentees of future coventures that include training in the cutting edge technologies that have made Israel’s economy work. Get the international community to throw more school system building into the mix and concentrate on building a secular Arab society with good education for girls and boys with a working democracy. Be open to a long term prospect of increasing collaboration and perhaps even eventual loose confederation with Israel. Within a generation have a functional society that is a model for secularism in the Arab world.

And let us both get past the perceptions of past injustices. Israelis and Palestinians are both there NOW. Which of those two futures would you prefer to see?

40

I simply do not see why the Palestinians should accept the legitmacy of the settlments in any form, the international community does not and neither does the long-term UN peace plan. The settlers have no rights to be where they are and they moved there in full knowledge of this. As for the Temple Mount, that is an entirely seperate issue as it has nothing to do with the PA as the sovereignity is in the hands of the Muslim religious authorities in Jerusalem.

Why do you expect the Palestinians to make all the compromises? Why do you expect them to cede more land when Israel has already taken most of the land that made up Palestine? It would be fairer if Israel gave up some of it’s green line territory to allow the return of at least some of the Palestinian refugees who still live in refugee camps within the borders of neighbouring Arab countries. The Gaza strip is one of the most densely populated areas in the world and overcrowding is a serious problem there, do you seriously think that giving away more land will help this?

Israel has never offered a serious compromise, rather it has attempted to blackmail the native population into excepting it’s terms by creating prejudicial living conditions for them. Israel COULD remove the settlments, Israel COULD withdraw it’s army - probably the two most vital preconditions for peace, but it does not. You cannot blame the Palestinians for their own persecution by Israel.

As for a federal state, yes that would be acceptable, but I am dubious that Israel would ever accept the Arabs as equal partners and would be willing to give them equal rights.